Looking to avoid the few hundred dollar price tag
Then Just save up and wait. Lux is not made to measure LED's. There is a reason the PAR meters are expensive. I dont know how nerdy you are, but there are people on the tube that build these themselves.
I don’t need it to be exact, and there are conversions for lux to par which is what I’m trying to figure out. I’m growing 2 fairly small plants in my closet, if I can dial in where my light needs to be without spending $500 I’m going to try and go with the cheaper route.
I saw this and another calculator online, but they don’t correlate with the graphs which were made using an accurate par meter.I don't use Led but...
Allows you to enter what kind of light you're using.Convert Lux to PPFD - Online Calculator | Waveform Lighting
Online calculator to convert illuminance (lux) to PPFD (micromoles per second per meter squared).www.waveformlighting.com
I think that's the problem of not having a PAR meter for Led.
My head hurts from researching this shit literally all day, I completely forgot about using that par map as a reference. Thanks for thinking for me lol
so for shits and giggles lets say it read 20,000 lux at 18”, 20,000/290 = 68.96 ....so round up to 69, would that be my conversion number for any lux reading under this light?
The real question is the accuracy of the meter. Most meters don't accurately quantify only the spectra that the plants use (PAR). Most read two different light sources as apples and oranges making any comparison pointless. An exception to that is a quality PAR meter like the Apogee MQ-500. This meter can read a HPS light or a LED light and make apple to apple numbers out of that.
Then skip the meter because you are wasting money to save money. I grew the first 28 years of my career without a light meter and now that I have an apogee it's sitting on the shelf collecting dust.
imo, a 20 dollar lux meter and the conversion charts to find hotspots and roughly check spread is all you need.
From what I’ve read it’s only the blurples and that color light that the lux meters won’t read, correct me if I’m wrong but wouldn’t I be fine with my white 4000k spectrum?
They will read HPS differently than MH or CMH, they read all lights differently. They don't measure PAR spectrum, and therefore you can't convert the LUX numbers to PAR numbers. It's just that simple. PAR means photosynthetic active radiation.
